With the continuing increase in the number of switches and routers in an administrative domain of a data network, it is increasingly difficult to configure and maintain the switches and routers that manage the data network. The network administrator must take into account not only how the network is designed, and its configuration, but also, how the network devices that support the network interact with each other.
Existing approaches for setting up of span sessions in the network are generally limited in functionality as they are implemented as add-ons to the network. For example, one approach includes the examination of the configuration files on network devices, and by snooping packets. A limitation of this approach is that the configuration files on the network devices are not a substitute for the know-how of the administrator that initially configured the network. While the configuration files in the network devices provide the properties of the network configuration, they do not typically provide the reasons behind the properties for the configuration in the network. Thus, any reconfiguration of the network without fully comprehending the reasons behind the properties for the configuration of the network devices may not yield the optimum configuration.
Furthermore, with respect to the challenge of the network configuration changes over time, network add-ons may not be configured to be fully integrated into every network device in the network, and thus, cannot reliably track the users and hosts as they migrate within the network, changing the network topology. Moreover, existing approaches cannot track users or groups of users because of their dynamic nature—that is, users can migrate from machine to machine within the network, while hosts can migrate from port to port.
In view of the foregoing, it would be desirable to have methods and systems for dynamically monitoring data network and managing the network elements based on high level intents associated with the network elements organized in logical groups in the data network.